Jesse Livermore Quotes

Don't speculate unless you can make it a full time job.

Speculation, in its broadest sense, is not an evil in itself, but the contrary, and relieves public distress far oftener than it creates it.

More money is lost anticipating the changes in the overall stock market than any other way of investing.

The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.

I knew a guy who had $5 million and owned his house free and clear. But he wanted to make a bit more money to support his spending, so at the peak of the internet bubble he was selling puts on internet stocks. He lost all of his money and his house and now works in a restaurant. It's not a smart thing for the country to legalize gambling [in the stock market] and make it very accessible.

If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he is wrong.

Don't bottom fish.

I caught hold of the great bull market in soybeans in 1977. I had no idea what I was doing, incidentally.

You cannot exist as a $20 billion company with speculation.

Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.

People always come up to me and ask what the next 'big short' will be. The truth is I simply do not have an answer, and do not want to have an answer, to this question.

I'm not short, so I can make a speech and drive the stock down and cover the stock. That's not what I do.

I play with leverage.

My advice to most people is don't short stocks. It's a very, very difficult business. And you can really get clobbered.

Betting that markets will be 'volatile' is like betting the weather will be partly cloudy. It's a smart-sounding strategy that doesn't mean much.

One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent.

A pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street (a community in which quality control is not prized) will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Speculator: One who bought stocks that went down.

Personally I don't think day traders are speculating, because traditional speculation requires some market knowledge. They are, instead, gambling, which doesn't.

The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.

Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily.

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.